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Hugh Pickens writes "The Las Vegas Review Journal reports that in its latest case, Righthaven is seeking relief from copyright infringement by the Drudge Report website and by the Drudge Archives website, and is asking for a preliminary and permanent injunction against infringement on a photo copyright, control of the Drudge Report website and statutory damages up to $150,000. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Righthaven complains about the use of a Denver Post photograph of a Transportation Security Administration agent patting down an airline passenger. Drudge displayed an unauthorized reproduction of the photo on the Drudge Report website on Nov. 18, according to the civil complaint. Shawn Mangano, the attorney who filed the lawsuit on Righthaven's behalf, says it is the first time Righthaven has sued over use of a copyrighted illustration. Righthaven also takes issue with the fact that the Drudge Report has no DMCA takedown regime to respond to those who allege violations of copyright. 'I assume it's going to be very seriously litigated,' says Mangano, noting that Drudge has substantial financial resources."
We've discussed previous attempts by Righthaven to turn a quick buck on news-related copyright.

Do they really think transferring the domain into their control is even remotely likely? It's one thing when you're talking about a torrent tracker where an injunction alone is unlikely to prevent future infringement. But if the court tells Matt Drudge to take down that photo, I'm pretty sure he'll take it down (once his appeals are exhausted).

Do they really think transferring the domain into their control is even remotely likely? It's one thing when you're talking about a torrent tracker where an injunction alone is unlikely to prevent future infringement. But if the court tells Matt Drudge to take down that photo, I'm pretty sure he'll take it down (once his appeals are exhausted).

He would probably take it down if they sent him a notice via email.

Still the idea that you can take a domain and control of a website as well as the statutory damages of 150k is ridiculous. Why not ask for his house, car, and wife?

Do they really think transferring the domain into their control is even remotely likely? It's one thing when you're talking about a torrent tracker where an injunction alone is unlikely to prevent future infringement. But if the court tells Matt Drudge to take down that photo, I'm pretty sure he'll take it down (once his appeals are exhausted).

Judges have been known to do even dumber things. Why not try it out and hope you got a dumb one?

So what if I don't like Drudge and do like Wikileaks? It's still absurd that they are asking for control of the domain for a copyright violation. The courts should reject such attacks on free speech. Unfortunately I have no confidence in the US legal system.

BTW: governments are supposed to be accountable to the electorate - NOT the other way round.

All power comes from the People, and is given to the government with their consent. Likewise the People have the right to take-back that power and dissolve said government. Hence government is merely a servant accountable to the citizens.

In theory, sure. In practice, you're advocating mob rule, which is the default system in the absence of a strong central power. I find it extremely difficult to believe that "the people" could ever get their shit together long enough to even depose a modern western government, let alone have the kind of rational, intelligent, fair-minded principles needed to replace it with a superior form of government. If "the people" want to launch us into a new dark age, the mentality you're talking about is exactly

There is no natural law requiring this, and religious laws (where they apply) tend to favor authority. However in the declaration of independence it says "[...] Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed [...]". The writers of the declaration of independence thought that this was self-evident. Also Abraham Lincoln expressed it rather well in the Gettysburg address as "Of the People, By the People, For the People".

And what natural law implies this? How about religious law? How about, oh, say, appealing to history and demonstrating that this is the norm for government/electorate relations?

If you appeal to history, you will quickly conclude that the normal state of humanity is barbarism, with petty crimes punished by gruesome public execution, no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, slavery commonplace, and the majority of people barely allowed to own property.

If you want to base your dream society on historical observations, go right ahead. The rest of us will carry on believing in silly fantasies like "universal human rights" and the concept that the authority of government derives from the consent of the governed.

I predict once again that the prevailing opinion of/. will turn on a dime when the target is someone they don't like.
wikileaks to politicians - "if you aren't dishonest you have nothing to worry about" = good
government to citizens - "if you aren't dishonest you have nothing to worry about" = bad

Firstly the reason that argument is used is because that is the line the government itself used, it is to show the government as being hypocritical and secondly governments are answerable to citizens, not the other way around.

I predict once again that the prevailing opinion of/. will turn on a dime when the target is someone they don't like.
wikileaks to politicians - "if you aren't dishonest you have nothing to worry about" = good
government to citizens - "if you aren't dishonest you have nothing to worry about" = bad

I know you are trying to argue the patriotic-statist line here, but in this case "the slashdot" (or the libertarian component thereof) is sagacious!"

As a matter of observation, despite your abstract notions of fairness as reciprocity, there exist two extremes of relationships between states and their citizens in terms of privacy/openness. On the one hand you have authoritarian states in which government enjoys a great deal if secrecy (privacy) and the citizens have very little privacy to speak of. On the other hand where the citizens enjoy a measure of privacy, officials, in exercising the duties of government have hardly any privacy at all. Of course there exists neither a govt. that has a camera in every citizen's bedroom, nor one so transparent as to have no official secrets at all, and on this continuum there is a constant struggle by officials who having tasted power want to pry and to conceal, and citizens who wish to increase individual liberty at the expense of state power. And didn't Obama get elected, at least in part, on a promise of greater openness and transparency in government?

Now you may be patriot who would sacrifice your liberty for the benefit of the state, that's your choice. But you have to understand that the desire for greater individual privacy and greater government transparency is neither hypocritical, nor contradictory. Quite the opposite, they are corollaries.

This government, in theory, is of, by, and for the people. (Yes, I know, it's not a democracy, it's a republic.) Because the people pay taxes to the government, and vote politicians into office, and the government exists solely to serve the people, the people have a right to know how their taxes are being spent, what their politicians are doing, and what the government is doing for or against them.

On the other hand, the people do not exist for the government. It's not the government's business what the people do, except when the people are employed by the government (and then only what they do on the clock,) when the people are using government services (in which case, the government has an obligation to make sure that the minimum of their services are required, to save the taxpayer money,) or when other people are being wronged, and the people have decided that that particular wrong should be addressed by the government.

In summary: People have a right to know what their government is doing, government has no right to know what its people are doing other than what affects other people under the government. So, no, it's not hypocritical to say that the government shouldn't hide anything, yet the people can hide.

IMO it was stupid to pick on Drudge. If they had brains, they would have picked on some anti-establishment podunk site, one whose rights a properly shopped judge would have no qualms about riding roughshod over, and kept doing it to build up layers of precedent, then tackled something bigger. Drudge may be unpopular among many but it still has a huge following and can draw on support from the right-wing astroturfing machine.

However, from my perspective I get to watch two organizations I despise hurt each other, so life is grand. Sure in the end it just means more lawyers get to buy outside decks for their fourth homes, but hey, it beats watching high frequency traders cruise around in yachts.

Drudge may be unpopular among many but it still has a huge following and can draw on support from the right-wing astroturfing machine.

I hear this kind of thing a lot: People hate Drudge, Drudge Report is slanted, biased, etc., etc. I agree that you can see that the Drudge Report editors often like to spin stories a certain way, but I don't see how it's much different than the summaries and headlines on Slashdot. Newspaper editors have always spun headlines to get attention, and headlines are all the Drudge Report really posts. If anything, Drudge doesn't editorialize anywhere near as much as the/. editors do. Maybe the site does tend to lean a bit to the right, but not rabidly so -- I doubt it leans anywhere near right enough for the serious Fox News followers. I find the site to be a very useful aggregator that allows me to skim through stories from various news sources, including ones I wouldn't normally seek out to read. It seems like a valuable service to me, and it's free. Assuming you're capable of thinking for yourself when you read a headline, what's not to like?

Every single one of them is politicized now. Every one has a notable and definable slant. The trick is to read multiple sources, investigate on your own, and find the truth that lies somewhere in the middle of all the sensationalism.

Or you can go to a perfectly unbiased place like/., make a witty little quip that has no actually evidence or discussion point, and suggest through omission that all the world's evils li

Because he started out as a spammer, spamming tons and tons and tons of newsgroups, including rec.arts.tv, which is where I saw his spamming. He'd spam his off topic 'report' there, _and_ would never see the various corrections to factual errors he very often made.

Sure it is. Drudge posts aggregated links to an article./. allows the slant of an individual to post their own summery, and add their own bias to it. Usually leaning towards the left, as the majority of posters here lie in that camp.

Not even remotely true. Drudge exhibits its biases on a constant basis. They might not do it with lengthy prose, but they make ample use of the multiple tools in their arsenal.

First, there is story selection bias. Why does drudge highlight stories about "CityX has record cold day for DayOfYear!"? Because he's thumbing his nose at "global warming advocates". And that's just an easy example.

Second tool: link wording. He's not copying the source's headline, nor is he describing the contents of the artic

It's all about pageviews, and not about the "slant," The bublegum machine comes out for more outrageous or controversial articles. Drudge never has been about the content of the story, only the magnitude of the story. It's too bad that the left hates him for breaking a story about a blue dress and a semen stain.

Drudge uses specifically worded one liners in his links to form the bias he wants the reader to get from the article. It's not uncommon to see him harp on something that, when reading the article, you realize was a small one line entry in an entire news story.

Sure/. allows for bias in the summary, but don't get fooled into thinking Drudge isn't manipulating your mindset via his aggregation.

Actually, it's hard for Drudge to spin anything: he simply breaks headlines, and does so way before the traditional media plods along on a story. If Drudge has any slant at all, it's simply biased to controversy.

I'll admit I don't know anything about Righthaven, had to look them up, but I'm wondering why they would ask for (or have any hope of getting) control of the web site? The statutory damages and removal of infringing content I can understand, but why would they possibly get control over something due to copyright infringement, especially for content they don't own? Are they filing at the request of the News Media Group?

Lawyers love to make idle threats and request compensation that they know they have a snowball's chance in hell of actually collecting. It's a bargaining tactic. I'm sure nobody actually expects to have Druge's domain handed over to them, as much as some of us would like to see that happen.

Lawyers love to make idle threats and request compensation that they know they have a snowball's chance in hell of actually collecting.

It's too bad there's no penalty for doing this.

There no penalties for doing it, but there are penalties for not doing it. I was sued, and decided to fight it pro per (without a lawyer). I did some research while preparing my response to the complaint, and found out it is standard practice to list every possible defense, even when they don't apply, because if some other evidence some to light, you cannot add another defense later. So everyone includes pages and pages of standardized superfluous boilerplate. Lawyers recognize this stuff and just skim over it.

Seems to me the court system would function better if there were less frivolous garbage clogging things up.

Both lawyers and judges benefit from a clogged, inefficient system. Since 85% of politicians are also lawyers, there is little chance things will change.

I recall another poster on Slashdot in another legal-related article stating that lawyers are taught to file every motion they conceivably can - no matter how ridiculous - just in case it flies. There's no real penalty to filing a motion that barely has a chance of going through.

Nelson put eight sentences of a 30-sentence Review Journal article in one of his posts, along with a link back to the paper; for this he was sued in federal court.

Righthaven demanded that his domain name should be locked and transferred to Righthaven. In addition, the company demanded "willful" statutory damages for copyright infringement, which can be as high as $150,000.

Also, what I don’t understand is this:

Righthaven sends no cease-and-desist letters before suing.

The DMCA is clear-cut about how to handle infringement. A company that side-steps the normal DMCA takedown process (which might have to be snail-mailed – that’s not quick enough for them though!) should have no right to straight away sue the infringing party. None whatsoever. But apparently they can, legally, get away with it.

Sounds sloppy to me. Doesn't the lack of a cease-and-desist give an opening to the defense to have the suit dismissed? The legal system is more about procedure than anything else, so not following procedure can really set you back if the other side catches on to it.

Doesn't the lack of a cease-and-desist give an opening to the defense to have the suit dismissed?

No.... Actually, the biggest reasons to send a cease-and-desist are (a) to avoid having to file a lawsuit by causing the offender to stop infringing, and (b) to provide notice to the offender that they are infringing, so that if they continue to infringe, the notice can be provided as evidence in court that the infringement was (eventually) willful.

In some countries, judges look extremely unfavourably on people who sue first and ask questions later, without attempting to settle things out of court, through less drastic channels. I don't know if the US courts take a similar view.

In some countries, judges look extremely unfavourably on people who sue first and ask questions later, without attempting to settle things out of court, through less drastic channels. I don't know if the US courts take a similar view.

An example from The Lawyers Weekly, Vol. 20, No. 39 (February 23, 2001) was The federal Crown has been ordered to pay $55,000 in costs to two men after a Nova Scotia judge stayed drug-trafficking charges against them based on the "serious misconduct" of prosecutors and police.

Canadian judges seemingly get grumpy when anyone tries to bamboozle them, including the Crown prosecutor (:-))

The DMCA is clear-cut about how to handle infringement. A company that side-steps the normal DMCA takedown process (which might have to be snail-mailed – that’s not quick enough for them though!) should have no right to straight away sue the infringing party.

That's not what the DMCA says.

The DMCA provides a takedown process that is directed at innocent service providers hosting information provided independently by users, and creates a safe harbor for the service provider only (so long as the se

Yeah, the DMCA “takedown notice” is a method of dealing with an independent content host. But under the DMCA you can also send a cease-and-desist notice to the infringing party personally. However they’ve made it their practice to just immediately sue.

Yeah, the DMCA “takedown notice” is a method of dealing with an independent content host. But under the DMCA you can also send a cease-and-desist notice to the infringing party personally.

You can always (the DMCA has nothing to do with this) send a cease-and-desist notice to someone who you believe is violating your legal rights. This is typically done when you believe that the probability and result of resolving the issue via a cease-and-desist is worth the additional delay it imposes over fili

If I am not mistaken, the DMCA is still the applicable piece of legislation. Just not the part of the DMCA that you’re thinking of.

I'm pretty sure you are mistaken. Now, there is lots of stuff in the DMCA, so maybe I'm missing something, but this is clearly outside of the safe harbor for service providers, and clearly completely unrelated to the anti-circumvention provisions, so what relevance do you think DMCA has?

The domain name is an asset, with some value. It isn't unheard of to request a specific asset, rather than a financial payment, as damages. Of course, there is often a very large difference between the damages that are requested and the damages that are granted by the court. The only cases I've heard of where a domain name has changed hands as the result of legal action have been trademark cases, but I haven't actually searched for relevant cases so there may well be other examples.

What you apparently are unaware of is that Righthaven is a company that was created by one or more newspapers in order to sue others for copyright infringement without getting the newspapers' own names on the lawsuit. Righthaven exists solely for the purpose of suing people for copyright infringement. One or more newspapers "sell" their copyright to Righthaven in return for the right to publish the material as the newspaper sees fit. Righthaven then sues anyone else who uses and/or links to that material for copyright infringement.

...except that no judge would allow that particular argument unless he was a complete tosser who had never worked in, around, or with a business in his life.The whole reason for copyrighting company names, the whole reason for brand names on websites and on products--hell, the entire justification for the concept of a 'trademark'--is summed up in a line-item in corporate accounts: Goodwill.

Goodwill is an attempt by the beancounters to make tangible the company's reputation--the name brand recognition, the

I'll admit I don't know anything about Righthaven, had to look them up, but I'm wondering why they would ask for (or have any hope of getting) control of the web site?

Righthaven always asks for that in their suits; AFAIK, every one of them has been settled without going to trial. Whether they could get it is debatable; I would assume their basis for asking is a rather expansive interpretation of the forfeiture provisions in copyright law. Until there's a case that firmly says they don't extend that far, th

While I think that Righthaven(nice doublethink name right there) is just a huge troll and doesn't deserve a cent, it's possible they have a leg to stand on legally here. Images in the news industry have a precedent of being licensed so if one that was owned by Righthaven was used without authorization by the Drudge Report then that's different from their attempting to claim that they "owned" a news story.

I suspect you're right - as much as I hate to 'root' for either of these two, Righthaven may have a valid infringement case here; The Drudge Report is hardly creating anything additional in a story. Of course, going from infringement and the thought that a DMCA complaint can be actually valid (Valid DMCA complaints! Who Knew?) to grabbing a domain name rather than the simple damages seems a bit odd.

The image may very well be copyrighted. However, since both sides are news outlets, Drudge has more than valid claim to fair use of the image. Especially considering that the image was likely only one small part of the article that he linked to. If Righthaven wins on this case, then it may as well go after Google News next (it has snippits AND images). But hasn't that already been tried??

ctrl+f "DMCA" in that article doesn't find anything. Has this Righthaven organization heard of the DMCA, and the provisions it provides for relief from copyright infringement? Seems like a textbook case for a DMCA takedown notice. IANAL, but I imagine a judge will take one look at this and say "did you even TRY to work something out with the infringing party before litigating?"

“This lawsuit, though, is a rarity insofar as copyright infringement being connected to linking. Righthaven takes issue with the fact that the Drudge Report has no DMCA takedown regime to respond to those who alleged violations of copyright.”

Has this Righthaven organization heard of the DMCA, and the provisions it provides for relief from copyright infringement?

Then you are looking at the wrong linked article. If you read the one linked from the sentence in TFS about the DMCA ("Righthaven also takes issue with the fact that the Drudge Report has no DMCA takedown regime to respond to those who allege violations of copyright") surprisingly enough contains the exact sentence that is in TFS.

Has this Righthaven organization heard of the DMCA

Since their lawsuit includes complaints about Drudge Report not following the

I wonder if the Drudge report just linked to the image. If so, that should definitely be legal.

The HTML spec and or http spec should make it clear (are they even licensed?)that it is always de-facto legal to create a link (anywhere) to content that has beenpublished and is publicly accessible on the world wide web,so long as the content is legal to view.i.e. re-linking to child porn could still be illegal, as it is collaborating in the crime, buteverything else is legal.

The HTML spec and or http spec should make it clear (are they even licensed?)that it is always de-facto legal to create a link (anywhere) to content that has beenpublished and is publicly accessible on the world wide web,so long as the content is legal to view.

Neither IETF nor W3C have any authority to dictate what is legal and what is not legal.

"Neither IETF nor W3C have any authority to dictate what is legal and what is not legal."

No but they could give authoritative guidance to the courts about what the assumedintent is when one is publishing content on a publicly accessible portion of the world wide web.

They can state that there exists a legal entity called the "World Wide Web",whose incarnation is the sum total of content accessible directly or indirectlyby hyperlinks which have themselves been made publicly known by the publisher.

Presumed intent, where that matters in a legal case, a question on which some of the content of standards documents might in some cases have some persuasive weight, they certainly would not be "authoritative" on the question of presumed intent.

1. The WWW is supra-national.2. Its defining technical standards (adherence to them), and common conventional useof those standards in the contrstruction of and participation in the world wide webconstitute the basis of a global-in-scope COMMON LAW that should be given seriousweight in adjudications of such matters by lower (narrower than global in scope) courts.

1. The WWW is supra-national.2. Its defining technical standards (adherence to them), and common conventional useof those standards in the contrstruction of and participation in the world wide webconstitute the basis of a global-in-scope COMMON LAW that should be given seriousweight in adjudications of such matters by lower (narrower than global in scope) courts.

There may be such an argument, but you haven't made it, and it seems to be pretty unlikely that such an argume

"There may be such an argument, but you haven't made it"Its a prima facie case. The world wide web is both tautologically and self-evidentlya global entity created and used by persons worldwideprior to its ordinary use having been regulated in any meaningful sense nationally.

The onus is on national legislatures to write law that explicitly takes away rightsto use the WWW as it was self-evidently intended (by virtue of its design) to be used.Such laws must define what kind of act linking is compared to other

Patent some critical component of HTTPWrite a small bit of code that implements that patentLicense that bit of code under a license that is like the GPL3, but with an additional clause stating that by using this code, you agree that anyone can link to any content made publicly available

In most statutes, it's legally dangerous to even point a gun at a team of thieves who've parked a van in front of your house and who are systematically robbing you. Someone "steals" a picture that is probably worth a few hundred dollars and has no real value apart from the original story... $150k in possible statutory damages.

This isn't a sign that we're sophisticated or advanced as a society. It says we're a bloody banana republic where the common man has no legally sure way to defend what is his, but some

In most statutes, it's legally dangerous to even point a gun at a team of thieves who've parked a van in front of your house and who are systematically robbing you....It says we're a bloody banana republic

People like to make fun of Texas, but you gotta give us credit where credit is due. You hear stories a few times a year of homeowners scaring off robbers with a shotgun or rifle.

Or maybe it shows that we see a difference between threatening to kill someone (which is what you're doing, implicitly or explicitly, if you point a gun at them) and filing suit against them in court. I would MUCH rather lose a $150k law suit than be shot - just saying.

Drudge's page is mostly a directory of links with the occasional thumbnail picture. Google already won a case in which it was decided that thumbnail images in connection with a directory of links was a transformative use, and thus was considered fair use. Drudge is driving traffic to the newspaper that published the image, just as Google does.

Drudge is going to win this, if Righthaven even litigates it, which is unlikely.

DMCA takedown notifications are handled by ISPs. Website operators don't have to do anything special to accommodate them. It doesn't look like Brightcove's lawyers are very bright. Must be the inbreeding.

I've always been confused about how meta news isn't news itself and therefore constitutionally protected. If the denver post (or the AP) posts a picture, and someone republishes that picture as 'news' because they reported it, how is that not journalism in itself. Is all copyrighted material off limits as 'news'? (headline, 'the denver post published this picture today claiming that... '

My gut would tell me, although I'm not a lawyer, that since reproduction for educational purposes is 'fair use' (whic

Shawn Mangano, the attorney who filed the lawsuit on Righthaven's behalf, says it is the first time Righthaven has sued over use of a copyrighted illustration.

He then added, "So, immediately taking complete administrative, editorial, and publishing control of a website IS the right amount of punishment to expect for unauthorized use of one single image, right? I mean, we ARE new at this, we don't want to look like overreacting jackasses who don't know what we're talking about. That'd just be embarrassing!"

Actually, I take that back. Given what the MPAA/RIAA seem to want, that seems light of a punishment.

It's time for LVRJ to get what they've asked for: to be left alone. Completely. Utterly. Don't mention them, don't link to them, don't discuss them, don't acknowledge that they exist. Let that be the last $150,000 of income they ever collect. If they don't want publicity, respect their wishes and let them die off in a corner by themselves.

Drudge makes money, and these charlatans want to be paid. I'm sure they are trolling for a cheap settlement.

If Drudge fights this (and he will, he's in the free speech business) this one shouldn't last very long, first off, even if he used a photo, it's covered by fair use, and secondly, is Righthaven the copyright owner? If they aren't, they have no standing.

These righthaven lawyers need to be disbarred. They are the Jack Thompson of insane IP barratry.

For acting in such an obviously cartooney evil way. But next time, instead of just demanding control of a well-known blog over one lousy picture, and thus starkly outlining the dangers of copyright w.r.t. the First Amendment, could you work in a lawsuit against an 8-year old or something?

Seriously, of course Drudge wouldn't have a DMCA process; it's not applicable in cases where the publisher is exercising editorial control over the contents.

Seriously, of course Drudge wouldn't have a DMCA process; it's not applicable in cases where the publisher is exercising editorial control over the contents.

Its possible this particular claim was put into the lawsuit to pre-empt any potential invocation of the DMCA Safe Harbor by Drudge. While you know, and I know, that Drudge isn't a host of user-posted, unedited, content, you don't rely on common knowledge in a lawsuit if you want to win.

Considered Fair Use by whom? The people who created the image, the ones that wanted to use it without attribution or the U.S. Copyright Office?

All the Drudge Report needed to do is attribute the original copyright holder in their post, but they chose not to. Drudge or anybody else who uses someone else's images should expend the minimal effort necessary to do what's right. That being said, the penalty asked for far exceeds the crime.